Mercenaries are NPCs for hire that will aid adventurers in their heroic endeavors. Their levels and abilities will scale appropriately and they will think and act for themselves with limited player guidance. They are designed for extra support or extra muscle in PvE encounters.

Unlike player pets, these NPCs are not directly controllable by players, though the player can give them general orders, but rather function like a normal party member including taking up a group slot and taking a share of the experience.

Mercenary Liaisons can be found in all starting cities and will allow you to hire mercenaries based on their race. The Liaisons within the Plane of Knowledge and Oceangreen Village will allow you to hire mercenaries of any player race. These merchants can be found using the Find ability.

Before purchasing a mercenary be sure to read the descriptions, cost value, and restrictions. There are different levels and tiers available. Some mercenaries may not available until you have completed certain content but there are some apprentice and journeyman ones available to all.

There are three classes of Mercenaries available - Tank, Healer, and DPS (damage dealing).

Healer Mercenary: Healer mercenaries prefer to heal their owner and others in the group rather than engage directly in combat. These mercenaries can also resurrect players upon death.

Tank Mercenary: Tank mercenaries prefer to melee. They will taunt if it is set to the main tank role. Though it will still attack and behave as a secondary tank if it is not set as main tank.

DPS Mercenary: These mercenaries will do damage to mobs.

Mercenaries can be suspended like a pet. There are some zones that will automatically suspend your mercenaries upon entering the zone.

Mercs are to be constantly tweaked to be sure they are viable as an alternative to grouping (as opposed to being preferred over grouping). In other words, they should only be desired as a last option.

There is a platinum cost associated with purchasing a mercenary. There is also a smaller recurring charge associated with upkeep (charged every 15 minutes). You can see the costs before hiring them. The amount you'll pay should be recoverable through normal experiencing and vendor-loot drops.

Mercenaries level up as you do. As you both increase in levels your recurring cost will adjust to the new levels.

The name of your mercenary is determined by SOE. If you wish to choose the name of your mercenary, you may do so by using a Potion of Mercenary Amnesia purchased from the Marketplace with Station Cash. The normal SOE naming regulations that characters must follow apply to your mercenary's name. The potion names the mercenary slot, so if you have multiple mercenaries, you need a potion for each one you wish to rename. If you dismiss the mercenary and get another one, that one will retain the name you have given the previous one, as long as it uses the same "slot".

Your Mercenary can come in three skill levels, and of those three levels, they are further subdivided into 5 tiers.

Skill Levels

Apprentice - on par with single group geared players, on spells and abilities that have a rank, it will have rank 1. It will have HP, Mana, and Endurance on par with characters that do not have the gear to acquire rank 2 spells and abilities.

Journeyman - On par with single group geared players, however, have rank 2 spells and abilities, slightly better damage mitigation, etc. Also Journeymen are less likely to "Lose confidence" then an Apprentice(see below)

Master - On par with raid geared players, additionally, have rank 3 spells and abilities. Currently, Master mercenaries are not in the game. It is unknown if they will ever be added.

Tiers

Tier 1 - has a ~25% chance to "Lose confidence" in your group based on the number and /con of the mobs being fought. Adds and Crowd control methods will additionally modify this percentage. Once confidence is lost, the mercenary is effectively worthless in a fight, unless crowd control methods come into play, creating a chance for it to regain its confidence.

To unlock the higher level mercs, you need to do quests. To get the Tier 2 though 5 Journeyman mercs, you need to do the SoD group progression. Void B grants you Tier 2, C grants you Tier 3, D grants you Tier 4, and E grants you Tier 5.

It has been reported that to get a Tier 5 mercenary it is not necessary to do all of the progression but just the "Invasion of Earth" tasks.

Alternate quest

There is a new quest, originally designed for Heroic Characters. It is given by Investigator Drolmer in Feerrott, the Dream, and while originally only open to Heroic Characters, since the April 29, 2014 patch, it is open to all. The reward grants access to Journeyman Tier 5 Mercenaries.

If you have the puller group role, the healer will not heal you until you are withing [sic] 50 feet of camp (camp is the merc's location in the case where it's just you and the merc). So if you need to split, you'll need to do it outside that 50 foot radius.

Healer mercs don't pay much attention to the Main Tank group role, except to give them a slight preference as a heal target (which doesn't really make much difference, as the MT is usually the only one taking much damage anyway).

Tank mercs pay attention to the MT role if it is assigned to them. They will taunt everything not mezzed and not attacking them when they are MT.

Healers are very similar to Clerics, in that they cast a lot of the same buffs and spells. they are not as good as a real PC as the AI is not as skillful as a person has the potential of being. That being said, they are better than not having a healer in general.

A healer will buff your group, keep the group healed as needed, primarily focusing on their owner and then the MA.

If you are grouped with characters that are so much lower in level then you are that the buffs for your level will not work for them, the merc cleric will not use buffs that will work on them. Merc clerics will only cast spells of their level.

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They only memorize spells appropriate for their level. Though I suppose if you were desperate you could shroud down to force the merc to mem those level spells. Or temporarily transfer ownership to the lower level player.

Your DPS mercenary will not engage any target that does not have you (or your group) as the top target. So if you are assisting others, your DPS mercenary will do nothing unless you (or your group) holds the aggro on the mob. Simply being on the aggro list is not enough, you (or your group) need to be on top.

Using a tank mercenary with "Auto Assist" disabled, the merc will wait for the "Call Assist" button to be pressed before engaging any targets. When the "Call Assist" button is pressed, all targets currently on the group enemy list (that are in his awareness range) will be added as valid targets and he will begin attacking using the normal AI for determining targets.

Using a healer mercenary with "Auto Assist" disabled, the merc will behave normally except you can press the "Call Assist" button to override normal rules for not healing pullers. If a puller is in the awareness range of the healer merc when "Call Assist" is pressed, it will have a 3 second window where it can drop a heal on them.

Normally when a mercenary joins your group, it takes a portion of your experience gains from the party. In the past, this experience just went away. In Call of the Forsaken, your mercenaries are finally putting that experience to use. Experience gains taken by a party’s mercenaries will now go towards unlocking Mercenary AA Points. These points and abilities will be stored upon your character, and will be available to all of your mercenaries.

We have noticed a few questions on how your character’s experience affects the Mercenary’s AAs, so we have added more tips inside the game to make sure you know how it works. If you use your Mercenary, you can gain experience to use towards your Mercenary AAs. If you don’t use your Mercenary, you gain nothing towards Mercenary AAs. If you use an experience potion, your Mercenary also benefits from that increase to gain more experience and thus earn AAs faster.

Healer mercenaries will have a tendency to use delayed heals and other slow healing spells, which can be problematic, since these can provide insufficient healing, and take time away from the merc to cast good heals. The workaround consists of blocking certain spells on the recipient of the heal spell, be this character or pet. Doing this can significantly increase survivability when relying on mercenary healing. Spell blocking has to be done for spells relevant for current level range; as the hiring character levels up, the mercenary will start to use new spells, and some of these will be of the delayed heal type, or other unwanted heals.

If survivability is an issue, and there is room in the party, two characters can each use a healer mercenary at the same time. In these cases it can be an advantage to have the healers in different modes, since two healers in same mode (say for example Reactionary) will have a tendency to cast the same healing spell on the same character at the same time. This can result in overhealing in some situations, as well as underhealing in others.

While DPS mercenaries is certainly better than nothing, they fall seriously behind at higher levels, and will often not be worth the xp cut. Some boxers will run an extra character for dps instead, leveling the character to the relevant level, having the character subscribed at least a single month to get autogranted AAs, and run it as a secondary character. While any character can be run in this manner, wizards, mages, and druids are often chosen for this role, for reasons of manageability and for added utility.